Introduction

This period is saturated with news about terrorists, their activities and the threat they constitute to a civilized way of life. This focus has largely obscured earlier concerns with a variety of other dangers to humanity and to life on Earth -- about which there is a considerable body of knowledge. Conceptually we find ourselves positioned in radical opposition to "terrorists" but with little understanding of what such people might themselves be opposed to. And yet, during the earlier relative scarcity of terrorists, we had a profound sense of the rightness of our attitude as exemplars of civilization -- despite the volume of evidence that all was not right in the world that our civilized attitudes had engendered.

In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? William Shakespeare